Wireless communication devices have become smaller and more powerful in order to meet consumer needs and to improve portability and convenience. Consumers have become dependent upon wireless communication devices such as cellular telephones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), laptop computers, and the like. Consumers have come to expect reliable service, expanded areas of coverage, and increased functionality. A wireless communication device may be referred to as a mobile station, a subscriber station, an access terminal, a remote station, a user terminal, a terminal, a subscriber unit, user equipment, etc. The term “mobile device” will be used herein.
A wireless communication system may provide communication for a number of cells, each of which may be serviced by a base station. A base station may be a fixed station that communicates with mobile stations. A base station may alternatively be referred to as an access point or some other terminology.
A mobile device may communicate with one or more base stations via transmissions on the uplink and the downlink. The uplink (or reverse link) refers to the communication link from the mobile device to the base station, and the downlink (or forward link) refers to the communication link from the base station to the mobile device. A wireless communication system may simultaneously support communication for multiple mobile devices.
Wireless communication systems may be multiple-access systems capable of supporting communication with multiple users by sharing the available system resources (e.g., bandwidth and transmit power). Examples of such multiple-access systems include code division multiple access (CDMA) systems, time division multiple access (TDMA) systems, frequency division multiple access (FDMA) systems, orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) systems, and spatial division multiple access (SDMA).
Wireless communication devices may include multiple antennas. Benefits may be realized by providing improved methods and apparatus for using multiple antennas.